In the 1980s ‘Donald Nice’ was an infamous cannabis smuggler, MI6 informant, most wanted man in Britain, and the alias of Howard Marks, a proud Welshman and graduate of Balliol College, Oxford University. After serving seven years of a twenty-five-year sentence for ‘racketeering’ in the US, Marks’s autobiographyMr Nice was published in 1996. Self-styled outlaw, stoner and intellectual, he caught the 1990s ‘cool Britannia’ wave, or rather ‘cool Cymru’. Although broadsheet reviews were indifferent,Mr Nice had massive popular appeal and for a time, Marks had the status of a folk hero. Even theDaily Mail said he ‘looked like a Rolling Stone’. Marks turned his criminal notoriety into celebrity, regularly appearing on TV and at music and book festivals and he even stood for election to the UK Parliament (unsuccessfully) and appeared in several films. He wrote and edited several more books, including a travel guide to Wales. The film ofMr Nice, starring Welsh actor Rhys Ifans, and cool-girl Chloë Sevigny as his wife, Judy, was an international success.
Mr Nice intrigues me because Marks was unrepentant, unlike most post-war criminal autobiographies which tended to be about their authors’ reform. For example, Glasgow gangster Jimmy Boyle’sA Sense of Freedom (1977) stated in the introduction the author’s intention to: ‘warn young people that there is nothing glamorous about getting involved in crime and violence’ and that proceeds from the book would go to kids from socially deprived areas of Scotland. Convicted armed robber John McVicar’sMcVicar by Himself (1974) described his escape from HMP Durham, reflecting on his criminal life with regret (the manuscript was allegedly smuggled out of prison). McVicar was prompted to write about his life after att
